One of the staples of the music industry is a different band singing a song from another, aka the Cover. Not to be confused with what happens in Rap/Hip-Hop which is the sampling, aka borderline theft. That aside, one of your best bets to making it big is to take an old popular song and do it your way to be popular too. I mean YouTube is full of shitty up and comers doing a cover or someone’s music. But here are some you may not know so well.
Orgy – Blue Monday (Originator: New World Order)
The year, 1999. The mood, CYBER PUNK/GOTH/FREAK. The band to bring us this in a dawning Millennium, Orgy. I mean the song is so dark, and they’re totally dark too. No one is going to tell them what to do man, they’re not some prissy boy band like N’SYNC or Back Street Boys. And they’re totally not as creepy as Merilyn Manson. Really not much to this, the band is just being fucked with and they keep showing how fashionable they are by changing cloths. Surprisingly this video got a lot of props, but not surprising given the time culturally.
A1 – Take On Me (Originator: A-Ha)
Nice work A1, you certainly have set yourself well apart from the pack with this music video and cover. I mean, take one of the top iconic songs of the 80s and add a boy band, bad synth and awful manual returning of the vocals and BAM! You have the formula for a bad music video that involves 95% crappy blue screen. I’ve posted the original A-Ha video before, but here it is again for comparison.
See, that’s something that wins awards. That’s something that’s far from a Sony Ad and stealing left and right of anything which people would call cyber space. No need to rip off The Matrix and Tron, no reason to make me want to puke. Actually I did because this was really popular in Europe for reasons forever unknown.
Jay-Z – Forever Young (Originator: Alphaville)
Remember what I said in the intro? Well here’s the proof. Lets use 80% of the song and just add new verses. This isn’t so much a cover, but a Hip-hop re-imagining. Can’t say I ever expect much when the Z wants to do a song his way. The video for itself? Totally representing everything proud and American just like Alphaville. (Who just happen to be a German band) None the less, have some chuckles at the original video which is pretty much Post-Apocalyptic Renaissance.